Why do restaurant failures seem sudden?

Because the sequence runs quietly: a cost line drifts unmeasured, cash tightens and corners get cut, revenue softens and the response is activity instead of diagnosis, the reserve becomes the operating budget — and then the end looks sudden. Each stage is cheaper to fix than the next; the first stage is usually visible in a weekly reading more than a year before closure.

From Why Restaurants Fail: The Honest Reasons, From the Turnaround Chair — the full reading, with the method behind this answer.